This video features a cat in a tiny raincoat. No explanation needed, really. It’s from Columbia Sportswear, and it’s pretty adorable.

I was paranoid about putting the name of the company in the title of this blog entry, for fear of being spammed like crazy, but if you’ve watched cable you’ve probably seen it. It’s one of a series of ads for The Erotic Network, and while being slightly NSFW, it’s possibly the sweetest take on this type of entertainment I’ve seen yet. How refreshing! It even promises to “fill your home with love.” Awww.

Love Jingle Commercial from Amanda Meyer on Vimeo.

So I guess JCPenney decided to stop using coupons or something–I’m not really sure since this “Nooooo” ad is incredibly vague. But between the taxidermy (taxidermed?) mice and the wooden puppet that resembles the movie’s ventriloquist puppet, this commercial seems to me to be from the makers of Dinner for Schmucks. Anyone agree?

Are you kidding me with this commercial? He snaps his fingers and a girl drops her clothes? So apparently when you’re rich, women cease to have their own will. Nice, guys. Add this to the long list of sexist and even flat-out misogynistic ads that we’ve seen lately. Ick.

P.S. Am I the only one who thinks the implication of the final snap is “do me”? Even worse!

When conversing about diamonds, what usually comes to mind may be the regular white diamond that sparkles on its setting. Only a few people are aware that, aside from white diamonds, there are other colors like pink, green, blue, yellow, and champagne. White diamonds would be the most typical while pink diamonds are the rarest. In terms of grading diamonds, gemologists use 4 components, namely carat, clarity, cut and color, to discover the quality. Expert diamond graders use different grading scales of these components in giving the worthiness to those precious stones.

A growing number of diamond buyers are actually aware of conflict diamonds, this also is amongst the reasons why a great number of consumers may want to know where diamonds are sourced from. Most of the diamonds bought from jewelry district Los Angeles are conflict-free diamonds received from Africa, Canada, Russia as well as other areas of the world. But when you would like an assurance that you are buying conflict-free diamonds, you might like to ask the location where the diamonds are received from and when they are able to offer you a written guarantee from your companies supplying their diamonds. It’s this that the jewelry industry call since the Kimberley Process certificate.

With regards to design, a lot of people still prefer the traditional white diamonds. But since the jewelry industry introduces innovative designs, canary diamonds and chocolate diamonds are starting to emerge since the new favorites. The buying price of these fancy colored diamonds is primarily dependant on the intensity of the colour, the size of the stone, the clarity as well as the cut, this also factors accustomed to judge all diamonds in Los Angeles and anywhere else on the planet. The task lies in finding these rare pieces because not many stores offer fancy color diamonds which can make them harder to find.

Experts estimate that the ratio of fancy color towards the colorless diamonds is 1:1000. But one of the many diamond colors available, yellow (canary) and brown will be more common when compared with green, pink and red. If it would fit your budget, buying fancy color diamonds would almost certainly allow you to be the thing of envy among family and peers. And when these diamonds are featured on silver and gold coins, the resulting pieces would surely be striking and worth spending a fortune.

On a precautionary note, you need to get just as much education about diamonds as you can gather together to avoid learning to be a victim in the diamond market. Knowledge is the best weapon in making sure that you will definitely get outright excellent diamonds while you shop on the jewelry district Los Angeles.

Just the other day, I was surprised to see Hemky Madera, better known as Ignacio from Weeds, starring in an ad for Progressive. Tonight, I looked up from my dinner of Red Baron pizza (a step up from my usual dinner of Totino’s Party Pizza) to see that same taser-loving gangster staring back at me, this time in a commercial for Best Buy. Is there anything this lovable henchman can’t sell?

In this Cadillac commercial, a driver almost gets in an accident and his life flashes before his eyes. But for some reason, all of his memories are from someone else’s point of view. That’s some out of body experience shiz! Either that or it’s a poorly conceived commercial.

Terrible writing and acting? Check. Abysmal production values? Check. Unnecessary dog? Oh yes.

One of my favorite character in Showtime’s Weeds is Ignacio, the hardened thug with a penchant for Milo and Otis. Now the actor who plays Ignacio, Hemky Madera, is branching out and doing commercials, apparently, and I spotted him in this recent Progressive ad as a motorcycle dude. It’s hard to imagine him as anything but a gangster type, but I guess by playing a biker he’s staying in that same bad boy realm. Either way, I’m glad to see him getting work!

Being a Tucson native, I grew up watching some amazing (and amazingly bad) local commercials. Who can forget “If you like chimichangas…I mean if you REALLY like chimichangas…come to Gordo’s” or the ad for Empire Glass where you got like 10 free Mexican dinners with a new windshield?

Another classic from the Old Pueblo is the Desert Diamond Casino’s epic ongoing ad series about two ne’er do well prospectors. Why do they keep going back to the desert? Why don’t they just stay at the casino?

What’s up with Derek Jeter’s new Ford Mustang commercial? First of all, he just drives around and barely does anything to earn his money, but that’s not my problem with it. It’s the soundtrack.

It’s not that I don’t like the song “Empire State of Mind,” it’s just that it was a big hit…last year. And like any pop song, it got played out and now the sound of it is just fairly irritating. Is this really the freshest song you could get the rights to, Ford?

Some commercials are just annoying, and perhaps they motivate me to turn the volume down a few notches. But some commercials are downright offensive to my sensibilities, to the point where I have to either mute them or change the channel altogether to avoid seeing even one more moment of them. This, to me, is a bad advertising strategy no matter which way you cut it. Here are the top five offenders. Watch them if you dare.

5. That Sarah McLachlan ad

You know the one I mean.

4. Head On

A classic case of a commercial that’s actually based on being impossible to watch without wanting to shoot yourself.

3. The Geico pig ad

Dear god, make it stop. Just make it stop.

2. This anti-smoking ad

I know, this is the kind of thing smokers need to see, but does it really have to be so incredibly horrifying? I have to mute it every time. I couldn’t even listen to it while finding the embed code!

…and the all-time worst offender:

1. Riddex Plus

I’ve seen this commercial dozens of time, and to this day, this is my reaction: “AAAAAAA!” (gouge out eyes) (die). This ad can go to hell.

Wow, it’s almost perfect that a big budget commercial decides to capitalize on something all the smart young kids are into and ends up missing the point completely. In the awesome but short-lived TV show Party Down, the main character, Henry Pollard, is a washed up actor who is best known for, yep, a commercial. This beer ad, his one claim to fame, features him uttering the catchphrase “Are we having fun yet?!” and haunts him wherever he goes forever after in the form of random people requesting that he say the phrase.

Granted, Hot Pockets dropped the “yet,” but it still kind of kills me inside.

Here’s the Party Down version just because.

When it rains it pours! This is truly the week for finding funny ads I’d been looking for since forever. This Arm & Hammer commercial has eluded me for months, as it doesn’t air on TV very often, but finally I can share its glory with the world. Feces!!

The first time I saw this Verizon ad, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why the nerdy kid looked so familiar. But as a big fan of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, it wasn’t long before I remembered him as Zack’s socially-challenged classmate from the summer school episode (“Summer of Our Discontent”). A quick internet search confirmed that he is one and the same (at least according to Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers). Great to see that he’s getting work, since he was so memorable on Zack & Cody.